A new ad from Momondo showing that people around the world are much more closely related than they think has been shared massively on social media since its release on Thursday. 

 

The five-minute ad, filmed in Copenhagen, has been viewed over seven million times on Facebook and another million times on YouTube. In Denmark alone, it has been shared well over 13,000 times. 

 

The ad aims to prove that “we actually have much more in common with other nationalities than you’d think”. Collaborating with the genetic research company AncestryDNA, the campaign brought 67 participants from around the world to the Danish capital in April and filmed them receiving their own DNA results. 

 

 

The participants have strong emotional responses to learning that their background is much more diverse than they had thought. 

 

“The DNA project supported our assumption that many of us do not know our full origins and that it changes our view of other nationalities when we get to know where we really came from. It was an eye-opener and an emotional journey for out test subjects,” Lasse School Hansen from Momondo said in a press release. 

 

A survey conducted by Momondo among 7,200 people in 18 countries showed that the majority of respondents think their DNA can be traced back to a maximum of two countries. Amongst 400 Danish participants, six out of ten thought that their heritage would at most include one additional country besides Denmark. 

 

“With the survey we wanted to find out whether people knew their own personal heritage. We assumed that people underestimated their own genetic diversity, and everything [in the DNA results] points to the fact that we have more in common with the rest of the world than we think,” Hansen said. 

 

Of course, Momondo’s campaign isn’t merely about spreading a message of diversity and tolerance. It is also meant to get people to use the company's services. To that end, the ad is part of a contest that will give 500 people worldwide the chance to map their own DNA to find out where they really come from. Winners of the DNA kits are then asked to shoot a video of their reactions to the results. One of those entries will then be given a free ‘DNA journey’ to visit the countries revealed in their genetic profile.